Lee Jae-yong, the imprisoned de facto leader of Samsung Group, underwent surgery for appendicitis, officials here said Saturday, according to Yonhap News. Lee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., was transferred to Samsung Medical Center in southern Seoul and received the surgery on Friday night due to a ruptured appendix, the report said. In January, the 52-year-old tycoon was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in a retrial of a bribery case involving former President Par

A linchpin holds the various elements of a structure together. The Korea-US alliance is often referred to as the linchpin of peace, security and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific. Simply put, the Korea-US alliance is indispensable to this region. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III touched down in Seoul ahead of a series of meetings with their Korean counterparts. It was the first time in memory that the top US

As more Americans get vaccinated, there is increasing talk of “vaccine passports.” There are strong emotional reactions to this idea, positive and negative, but my attempt at a more analytical view leads me to a conclusion that is not entirely satisfying (even to me): America should work to develop vaccine passports but never actually require them. First, I am not impressed by the criticisms that vaccine passports will create an unfair two-tier society. COVID-19 already has done tha

A Harvard University law professor’s recent article asserts that “comfort women” who served at Imperial Japan’s war-front brothels were “willing prostitutes” who worked under contracts and that their “sex slave narrative” is “pure fiction.” “The claims about enslaved Korean comfort women are historically untrue. The Japanese army did not dragoon Korean women to work in its brothels,” wrote J. Mark Ramseyer in his Jan. 12

Four people of Korean descent were among those killed in a series of deadly shootings in the US state of Georgia, Seoul’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday. South Korea‘s Consulate General in Atlanta sent consular staff members to check if there were any other Korean causalities in the shootings, the ministry said. In the shootings, at least eight people, most of them Asian women, were killed at three different spas in the Atlanta area. According to reports, a 21-year-ol

진행자: 임현수, Paul Kerry 1. Even without a Grammy, BTS goes on [1] South Korean boy band BTS left the Grammys without an award in hand on Sunday, Los Angeles time, but still the journey goes on. *go on: 계속되다 [2] BTS was nominated in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category at the 63rd Grammy Awards for its megahit single “Dynamite.” This year’s ceremony took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center without a live audience. *take place: 개최되다 [3] The group vied ag

Neatly tucked into the $1.9 trillion stimulus package is the second-largest welfare expansion in US history. President Joe Biden’s plan would increase child allowances -- cash welfare grants for parents with children -- from an annual $2,000 per child to a maximum payment of $3,600 for each child younger than 6 years of age and $3,000 for children aged 6-17. The result: $78 billion per year in new cash grants to families, on top of the nearly half a trillion dollars that government curren

This is the second installment of a three-part series looking into SK Innovation’s struggles to rise to the global leadership of lithium ion batteries, which have become a key enabler for a global shift toward sustainable mobility. The articles are sponsored by SK Innovation. - Ed.  SK Innovation’s journey into the battery business dates back to 1982, when SK Group acquired Korea Oil Corp. and changed its name to Yukong. After the acquisition, Yukong chose future businesses

When it comes to COVID-19 policy, President Joe Biden has clearly opted for a go-slow approach. If we “follow the science,” though, it’s apparent that he’s being too cautious. In his first prime-time address in office, he addressed the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in America. He expressed hope that, by Independence Day, family and friends could gather once again. But he immediately hedged, adding that this “doesn’t mean large events with lots of people toge

We’re starting to see the outlines of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, and you won’t be shocked to hear that it’s looking very different from President Donald Trump’s. But here’s something that may surprise you: Biden’s foreign policy also differs in significant ways from President Barack Obama’s. Trump declared his goal was “America First,” which often meant trashing allies and starting trade wars. It was a noisy way to interact

Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump raised US tariffs on imports from China several times, from an average of about 3 percent when he took office in January 2017 to over 20 percent by the end of 2019. As a result, the current average US tariff on Chinese goods is essentially at the same level that the United States imposed on the rest of the world in the early 1930s under the Smoot-Hawley Act, a protectionist measure that many economists blame for the severity of the Great Depression